Comayagua

Comayagua sits in a broad valley of Honduras, surrounded by the Montecillos, Comayagua, Esquías, Lepaterique, Mulacagua, and Pototerique mountain systems. The city lies 80 kilometres northwest of Tegucigalpa and 594 metres above sea level. Its tropical savanna climate, wooded hills, and route toward San Pedro Sula made it a natural focus for settlement and administration between the Caribbean and Pacific sides of Central America. Captain Alonso de Cáceres founded the city in 1537 under instructions to find a position between the two oceans. Comayagua became capital of Honduras throughout the colonial period and gained churches, colleges, convents, houses, and fountains. Its colonial system of cisterns and aqueducts was the first of its kind in Honduras. The cathedral was inaugurated in 1711 and contains the oldest clock in the Americas; the Antonina Bell in the church of San Francisco was cast in Alcalá de Henares in 1460. Tegucigalpa challenged Comayagua as a mining centre from the mid-seventeenth century, and the rivalry deepened when Comayagua politically absorbed Tegucigalpa in 1788. Comayagua’s surviving architecture records a long contest between valley settlement, religious prestige, and a shifting mineral economy.